Welcome

Welcome to the weblog serialization project for the novel, "Is Wanting Enough?". This novel was published June 2002. This is a celebration of sorts for the five-year anniversary of the publishing of this novel. Another reason for publishing this novel on the world wide web is to refresh my fans' memories concerning the storyline and characters as prelude to the release of my second novel sometime next year.

This site is run by me, the author of "Is Wanting Enough?" , Terry J . Kunkel.

Chapters and art from the book will be added at intervals.

Hope you enjoy the book and the art.

--Terry J. Kunkel

Is Wanting Enough? - Terry J Kunkel - Cover (front)

Is Wanting Enough? - Terry J Kunkel - Cover (back)

Is Wanting Enough? - Terry J Kunkel - Title Plate

Is Wanting Enough? - Terry J Kunkel - Imprint

Is Wanting Enough? - Terry J Kunkel - Copyright

Is Wanting Enough? - Terry J Kunkel - Dedication

Is Wanting Enough? - Terry J Kunkel - Epigraph

Is Wanting Enough? - Terry J Kunkel - Table of Contents pg. 1

Is Wanting Enough? - Terry J Kunkel - Table of Contents pg. 2

Is Wanting Enough? - Terry J Kunkel - Table of Contents pg. 3

Is Wanting Enough? - Terry J Kunkel - Acknowledgements

Is Wanting Enough? - Terry J Kunkel - Part I

Is Wanting Enough? - Terry J Kunkel - Prologue: A Little Backstory

Prologue:

Past Tense

Paris, France, July 18, 1985 Current Era (CE)

T

hursday, July 18, 1985, nineteen-year-old corporal Thorson Kyeler, met Marlena outside the gates of the United States embassy in Paris, during an anti-nuclear weapons demonstration. It was a warm, muggy day. The type of day meant for picnicking along the Seine with your sweetheart, for presenting your loved one with fresh cut flowers from one of the many boutiques lining the Champs Elysees, or for just walking hand in hand through one of the city’s myriad parks. Thorson Kyeler, eight months out of boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina, now at his first duty station, Paris, France, met his future wife outside the US Embassy gates and shot her.

He had been on embassy duty there during the early days of the eco-wars. It was during this time, a Green Peace splinter group, led by a Dakota shaman named Merlin Darkmoon allied with French environmentalists had attempted to storm government buildings throughout the capital city. Their goal: to occupy those buildings until the government agreed to cease nuclear warhead testing in the Southern Pacific.

A week before, in an engagement between the Green Peace fleet and a French frigate, smart torpedoes had been exchanged between the two sides, sinking one of Green Peace ships and crippling the frigate. After that incident, the embassy marines were put on alert.

At fifteen-hundred hours that afternoon, a small group of twenty protesters had gathered outside the gates of the US Embassy. Marlena Merrimac, exchange student from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was observing the demonstration as research for a paper in social dynamics at Sorbonne University.

By 15:15, things had turned ugly when the protesters clashed with a group of thirty-two French patriots bent on denying the environmentalists their rights to free speech. At 15:25, it was patriots: 4, green peacers: 0, as a new playing team took the field. A squad of marines dispatched from the embassy, in the charge of Corporal Kyeler, waded into the melee, armed with tear-gas launchers and riot batons.

The skirmish slowed, as the two sides took stock of the common threat to what they saw as their inalienable rights to maim and injure each other. The two factions of the crowd separated, and as the marines moved in to fill the void, the riotous throng closed in behind them in a classic pincers’ movement. The rioters were as unaware of their collective brilliance as military strategists, as the marines were of the blunder they committed in underestimating the viciousness of the rabble.

The marines circled shoulder-to-shoulder facing outward as they attempted to regroup, but the mob was upon them and gave no time to react. Three marines were down and being pummeled by at least a dozen rioters when Thorson drew his sidearm and raised its muzzle to fire a warning shot. One of the environmentalists seeing him raise the gun to fire, attempted to grab it away from him but only succeeded in pulling his arm down as Thorson’s finger tightened on the trigger releasing the hammer spring. Years later, Thorson would recall the surreal slow motion of the events that followed.

The trip hammer moved forward striking the firing pin mechanism. The firing pin drove into the primer pan of the .45 caliber bullet, igniting the powder charge in front of it. A brief powder flash from the muzzle preceded the hollow sounding explosion of the .45 slug breaching the sound barrier as it left the barrel of the weapon.

Marlena turned toward the sound. Thorson’s arm recoiled as the spent shell casing tumbled lazily after being ejected from the automatic’s chamber. Later, Marlena swore she could see the bullet coming toward her in slow motion, sunlight glinting off its sides as it rifled through the crowd toward her. A moment, an eternity later, she lay face down in the street. The fighting stopped as the stunned crowd looked from her to Corporal Kyeler. He stood dumbfounded, still holding the .45 in a white-knuckled grip at his side. A blanched expression masked his face, as he looked wide-eyed at the still form of Marlena.

This incident would mark the one time in his thirty-year career as a marine that Thorson would fire a weapon at another living being. Concerned for her well-being and ashamed of the fact that he was responsible for nearly killing her, he went to visit her in the Embassy infirmary the next day. Two years later, they walked beneath a canopy of crossed sabers, as man and wife. Each marine on either side of the newlyweds, lowering his sword in salute as they passed.

For years into their sixty-eight year marriage, in the dim lit intimacy of their bedchamber, during the privacy of their nights when they would come to each other not as partners or helpmates in the day-to-day struggles of rent checks and grocery bills, but as something more primal, something more base than the daytime veneer of their lives belied. It was during these interludes, when man met woman, woman met man, that he would reach out to touch the small round scar above her right breast. Tracing fingertips up and over a slender shoulder to the exit wound behind her shoulder blade. He would kiss her wounds, long since scarred over, himself long since forgiven by her for receiving them, and remember that day in Paris when a marine from Parris Island, who was just nineteen and eight months out of boot camp, shot the love of his life.

Marlena after marrying Thorson, finished her college degree over the next two years at various colleges and universities wherever Thorson was stationed.

He was stationed for a year at Iwakuni, Japan, for two years in Manila, for six months TAD in Korea. The list of places they had lived and of the friends they left behind with each new reassignment grew throughout the years each time Thorson re-enlisted. From duty station to duty station, packing, and unpacking, from nondescript base housing to substandard civilian housing she followed him, complacent if not exactly happy in the role of marine wife.

Marlena gave birth to a stillborn boy in the fall of 1989. She never recovered from her grief until late spring 1990, when Peregrine Ulysses Kyeler came into the world squalling and kicking. Marlena named her son for the falcons she watched streaking and diving across the skyline of Chicago as a little girl.

If ever there had been creatures born to fly, it had been the peregrines that nested among the rooftops of Chicago’s skyscrapers. She would sit for hours by the glass doors of her parents’ Lakeshore Drive high-rise watching the aerial ballet of the raptors. She watched one summer morning, as one of the falcons took a pigeon as its first meal of the day.

The sun had tinged early morning clouds a rosy purple as it climbed above the horizon on Lake Michigan. The falcon flying inland, spotted its prey. Tucking its tapered wings ever so slightly to increase speed, it waited with perfect timing until it was just above and behind its target, then with a precision granted only to birds of prey, it rolled inverted, folded its wings completely and dived, neatly snatching the pigeon from midair. Then, she had been able to articulate what moved her to such wonder as she watched this moment of brutal, terrible beauty, but it would be a memory she would carry the rest of her life.

The word peregrine also meant wanderer. A word that she thought succinctly described the nomadic life of a military family.

Thorson, picked their son’s middle name, Ulysses. Being a military man and civil war buff he, held General Ulysses Grant in high esteem. Whatever the general’s personal failings may have been, there was no denying that the man had been a first-rate military strategist. Thorson also was an enthusiast of Greek mythology. Of all the ancient stories from Greece, “The Illiad”, was his favorite piece. Odysseus, the hero of the Trojan War, cursed by the goddess, Athena, spent a decade to return to his native Ithaca and his one true love, Penelope. Thorson knew that Ulysses was the Latin translation for the Greek name Odysseus. Therefore, he was able to combine two of his favorite pastimes with the name choice of Odysseus.

It was while Thorson was on a shipboard detail, Marlena, alone in New Orleans with their newborn son, became interested in the Occult and parapsychology. She had called Brigitte Marson, a friend and navy wife, whose husband was serving aboard the same ship as Thorson, and asked whether she would watch Peregrine for a while to give her a much-needed respite from the constant neediness of a two year old.

She walked aimlessly through the French Quarter, stopping randomly to look in shops to make those adventitious purchases of things she never knew were needed until they were bought. Upon whim, she walked into Madame Bonaparte’s House of Tarocco.

Esmeraude Bonaparte proceeded to do a tarot reading for Marlena. Looking into her soul, she saw a kindred spirit. She saw a woman of great psychic talent who only needed the guidance to ripen her gift to fruition. After Thorson returned from his tour of duty aboard the USS Dubuque, she attended twice-weekly meetings of the New Orleans French Quarter Witches’ coven, presided over by Madame Bonaparte.

Thorson saw Marlena’s fascination with the Occult and New Age movement as a chance for her to get out of the apartment and away from Peregrines constant tirades for a few hours each week. It was a time for him to try unsuccessfully at forming a father-son bond with Peregrine. Even at an early age, Peregrine was aloof and disdained being held or touched, preferring to spend time by himself, playing with his toys and imaginary friends.

The years passed. Their marriage endured the usual storms of life in the twentieth century. Peregrine grew into a young boy, ever more introverted and shy. Six more months and time to pack again. Four more duty stations and finally the recruiting detail in Wisconsin.

Marlena started her own coven that met at her home Thursday evenings. During these meetings, Thorson gladly went to his workshop located in an old shed on their property. Over the years, he had grown increasingly estranged from his wife and any chance to sneak away for a few hours to the workshop was a welcome break from the tedium of her incessant chattering about crystals, potions, and ESP.

In his workshop, Thorson had gotten in touch with his artistic self. He was not sure why he took up arc weld sculpting, but he found that he liked doing it. Whatever he lacked in talent or training he made up for in sheer quantity. No piece of metal, no matter how large or small was safe from his cutting torch.

He started with small projects like the yard flamingos made from spare wrought iron railings. Slowly working up to larger abstract projects. His artistic reach currently culminated in his latest creation: a tyrannosaurus rex, which in a previous life had been a 1988 Nissan wagon. Shortly after he hauled the dinosaur from the shed to the front lawn, the townspeople began to give sidelong looks at Thorson and Marlena whenever the couple ventured into town. They’d quietly whisper about the crazy marine and his witch wife that lived on the little hobby farm outside of town when the couple were out of earshot.

Thorson pretended that he did not care what the townspeople said about him. When the curious or would-be comics down at Lindsey’s Bar good-naturedly laughed about Marlena being a witch, calling her Samantha, while referring to him as Darren, He would simply grunt, shrug and say, “Women.”

Their marriage like a rose garden, once bloomed in the Spring of their passion. It was this passion that produced their son Peregrine. However, like so many gardens that at one time thrived, but due to negligence and indifference, became disheveled and choked by weeds, so it was with Thorsen and Marlena.

Their season in the sun had been a scant 10 years. The decline of romance in their lives had begun about nine years earlier. Still 19 years together, was a successful marriage, after a fashion.

Now in the winter of their marriage, they stayed together more out of momentum, than love. They were complacent. They were comfortable with each other, knowing what and what not to expect from the other. Thorsen had his friends at Lindsey’s and his arc-welded sculptures. His sculpting forms had become increasing bizarre as the years progressed. Marlena had her crystals, mystical chants, and the coven meetings every month under the full moon at a makeshift ‘Stonehenge’ at the crest of Mattock Knoll.

Peregrine, named for a solitary bird of prey, took to solitary ‘flights’ of running the Wisconsin backroads. Running from what he was to what he would become. Always the running and the aloneness—they were always there. The two constant threads winding through his life that he could depend on. Peregrine Ulysses Kyeler, whose name meant handsome wanderer on a long journey, became increasing estranged from his family—from everyone.

Thorsen and Marlena, could not have known just how appropriately they had named their son.

Is Wanting Enough? - Terry J Kunkel - Chapter One: Present Tense

1:

Present Tense

Deer Crossing, Wisconsin, USA, August 21, 1996 CE (Current Era)

H

e wished that wherever they were, the aliens would hurry the hell up and return to take him home. In fact, they could come and take him right now. Right here. Right now. It was too hot to be running anyway. He hoped that there was Coke aboard the mother ship.

Aliens?

What if he, Peregrine Kyeler, was already living among a nation of aliens and he was the last human left on Earth?

Nation of aliens is to Alien nation and sounds like alienation: defined as the state of being alienated. Alienated. That word was an appropriate epithet for him he thought. It could be put on his tombstone as part of the inscription: “Here lies Peregrine Kyeler, 1978—1996: alienated.” He smiled ruefully. Consumed as he was by teenage angst, he could still find humor in his black pathos.

What made him different from the others? Why, when other students his age were concerned only with the frivolities of youth, did he have to grapple with this unnamed stigma? He was not asking to be football captain, (Definitely not that. Better to be a social pariah than to believe that twenty-two brain-dead steroid droids—‘roid droids for short—chasing after an inflated pigskin mattered much in the big picture) just to have a normal teenage existence. Instead, he was shunned by the more tolerant of his fellows, and outright ridiculed by others less kind.

His entire family was strangely out of keeping with the small-town lifestyle of Deer Crossing, Wisconsin; a town peopled by farmers, shopkeepers and tavern owners where farm pickups, driven by men in coveralls, shared the narrow streets with buggies driven by Mennonites dressed in black.

The residents of Deer Crossing led lives far from the larger world, ensconced in the simple business of growing up, marrying, raising their children, and then dying. They worked during the week, went to white steepled churches on Sundays, worried about milk futures and whether the high school team would win Friday night’s football game. Somehow, the rasping cacophony of MTV and the violence of the evening news flowed over and around the town, like water over stones in a stream. However, from this isolation, the townspeople grew first complacent and then quietly indifferent to any idea or person who did not fit in or broke one of their unwritten and unspoken social credos.

Peregrine’s father, Thorson, was a first sergeant in the Marine Corps, who ran his household with the same by-the-book rules and unbending discipline with which he commanded the local recruiting office. His sin in the eyes of the townspeople was bringing the witch to live among them. The witch was his wife, Marlena.

Marlena however, preferred the title of ‘seeress’ to that of witch. She grew herbs in her garden, believed in the mystical energy potential of crystals, and possessed the gift of second sight. It was a gift, which, with the help of Madame Bonaparte, she traced back to 17th Century Salem, and one she’d passed on to her son.

Marlena had tested Peregrine for psi potential the year after he turned sixteen. He had scoffed at the idea of possessing any such power.

His was an analytical mind. Logic and practicality were his touchstones. These beliefs he learned from his father who saw the world in grainy black and white. Indeed, he was skeptical of anything he could not quantify through direct observation. He had agreed to the tests to assuage his mother’s nagging about it and he thought it might also be fun. While he did not share his mother’s beliefs, he saw no harm in humoring her.

The test results surprised even Marlena. Peregrine not only was a genuine psi talent, he was a prime talent. He was easily a prime-ten on the log-R scale of paranormal ability.

“Well, Mom, how’d I do? Should I ask Kreskin for a job?” he asked, while she consulted tables in the back of a book to score the test results.

She had looked across the kitchen table at him and smiled. She did not intend to complicate her son’s already difficult teenage years. Besides, it was best if the gift developed naturally on its own without the pressure of expectation. “No, you were right. You flunked miserably. You’re just a normal teenager,” she had said.

“Normal,” he snorted while jogging down the long sloping hill. Never was nor would he ever be considered normal, at least by this town’s standards, maybe the world’s standards as well. He mopped his brow with the bottom of his tee shirt as though to wipe the thought away with the sweat. He smoothed the damp shirt over his well-defined torso while he ran.

A lonely teenager, a lonely country road, both ran past fields of corn and hay lying at the base of rolling woodland hills on a hot August evening. Low slanting rays of sunlight filtered through unstirring leaves, while insects swarmed crazily in the shadows.

Heel down. Rock forward. Push off with the toes. Exhale from the mouth. Repeat for the other leg, and then inhale. Be sure all the while to swing the arms parallel to the side, not across the chest, keeping in time to the cadence of the stride.

Peregrine concentrated on his running form, oblivious to his surroundings. He entered that zone of concentration where the mind of the distance runner is clear and focused only on propelling the body forward another step, another hundred meters, one more kilometer. Where there was only the forcing of breath into lungs, the smooth pumping motion of arms, and the soft thumps of footfalls as rubber soles met pavement.

The kilometers disappeared behind his Nikes while the road curved away to the right past a blue steel bridge signaling there were seven more kilometers before the end of the evening’s run.

Breathe, thump, thump. Breathe, thump, thump. Breathe, thump, thump.

Heat, humidity, sweat ran down his forearms and the backs of his hands. He reached up again with a corner of his T-shirt to wipe away the sweat stinging his eyes. The shirt, already saturated, was little help.

The quietude of the summer evening closed in around him. He relished those summer evenings in Wisconsin when you could stand on your front porch and hear the creaking and cracking of the growing corn. The quiet was so palpable, that Peregrine fancied he could hear a high buzzing whine over the sound of his breathing, the same sort of sound a person heard when pressing a seashell to their ear. Seashells. Oceans. Drinking water. He slowed to an easy jog, looking forward to finishing the run and getting home. He laughed to himself at the old runners’ joke about the best part of running being stopping.

He thought about soaking in the outside Jacuzzi next to his father’s machine shed, while sipping a tall, icy glass of Coke. He would lie back in the hot bubbling water, drinking Coke, the warm water soothing his sore muscles, while he looked with longing at the spill of the Milky Way across the summer zenith.

With a long exhale, he slowed to a walk. His exertions in the heat and humidity had momentarily sapped him. Besides, way out there away from town, no one would see him if he stopped to walk for a few minutes. The only witnesses were a dozen curious Holsteins plodding homeward for the evening milking. They walked on a dirt path alongside a low hill, in that odd disjointed gait that only cattle seem to be able to manage with any dignity.

“Looking good tonight girls,” he said over the barbed wire fence. “In fact, I would say that you look moo-velous,” he said effecting his best Billy Crystal impersonation, which he admitted was not that good. That remark met with indifferent looks and languid swishing of tails from his bovine audience. Arms crossed over his chest, Peregrine shook his head in mock disappointment. “Some people just don’t know how to take a compliment,” he admonished the retreating hindquarters of the trailing cow.

“You’re losing it Peregrine; hitting on that young heifer when you know her bullish father wouldn’t approve of you.”

He closed his eyes, put his head back, running his hand through his sweat-soaked brown hair, relishing the sensation of the summer heat. He felt the heavy, sultry air pressing down on him and the rising waves of heat from the blacktop permeating his lean body.

He stood, head back, eyes closed, wishing that the summer would last forever.

Even in the heat of August, he dreaded the coming winter. The old-timers from town aptly described Wisconsin winters as lasting nine months with three months of poor skating.

When Peregrine opened his eyes, thoughts of the cold and desolate winter ahead melted like the nightmares of an awakening child. The embrace of the still-stifling heat reassured him that summer, although ephemeral, was not yet ready to loosen its hold, and abandon him like some fickle lover.

Peregrine gazed upward as if expecting to see the mother ship on final approach for a landing. What he saw instead was an infinite azure arc.

The sky was a luxurious indigo, lightening to cobalt, then to a lighter and lighter blue the closer to the horizon he looked. Like looking into an inverted tureen, the blue was interrupted only by the occasional floater as it passed along his peripheral vision and by an airliner scratching a bright contrail across the sky.

The airliner, scratching a contrail across the nearly setting sun, was a silver arrow riding a bright yellow-white vapor trail across the blue. Peregrine watched, and wished, not for the first time, he could be going wherever the people on that plane were going.

He wondered about the people on board. What exotic destinations were at the end of their journeys? What adventures awaited them? What were their lives like? Were they going to strange place, or arriving home from some sojourn abroad?

Someday, he would be one of those people on a plane crossing the skies of Wisconsin, riding a silver-winged Pegasus. Better yet, maybe he would be the pilot. Yes, he would like to learn to fly someday. Perhaps someday, there would be some other young boy standing in a field watching him fly wishing that he was bound for adventures.

Airplanes were knots of destiny, Peregrine thought. Like the mathematical knots he studied in high school geometry. Just as such a knot was a point on a curve or surface at which there could be more than one tangent line or tangent plane, an airplane traveled on an arc across the sky carrying the intersecting lives of its passengers. Some of those lives would intersect for brief times with those of other passengers as business associates, friends or possibly as more. Others, like the orbits of eccentric comets who enter the solar system once, never to be seen again, would cross the paths of their fellow travelers maybe as a polite nod or hello only to never meet again. There was something very sad and lonely about that to Peregrine, as if those people were wasting a chance at something. A chance at what, he was not sure.

He first rubbed his thigh, and then reached down farther on his leg to massage his knee. His muscles had begun to cool and stiffen during his reverie with the cattle. “Better pick up the pace if you want to get home to that Coke and hot tub,” he said to himself while starting to run again at a modest pace. He still had about four kilometers and twelve-thousand years to go before he’d have a chance to drink that Coke.

Is Wanting Enough? - Terry J Kunkel - Chapter Two: Diplopia (Double-vision)

2:

Diplopia

Cape Cod, Massachusetts, 18:40 EDT, Gyne 14, 4980 NA (The New Age of Mankind)

E

ryn Lefèvre grabbed the doorjamb, pivoting her long, slender body on one foot. She swung through the open doorway into the bedroom with the lithe grace of flowing water. Across the threshold, she stopped, scrutinizing her twin reflection.

She saw a pleasing oval-shaped face, with high cheekbones and a pronounced jaw line. Beautiful auburn hair, her best feature she thought, framed and softened her face. Like a waterfall, her hair fell in wavy tresses over slender shoulders. Deep brown eyes flecked with gold, like sunlight refracting through tiger’s eye stones were partially hidden by smoky lenses of wraparound VirTV glasses. A graceful nose curved to meet lips that she thought were maybe just a little too thin. The heritage of the robust life led by her French peasant ancestors, shone through in a ruddy complexion. Even farther down her family chain, were ancient Franks who had conquered most of France some 16 centuries before her birth.

She continued to regard the image before her while she absently combed bangs away from her face. Then, she smoothed her hands over her hips, tugging to adjust her tight, black leather pants. To complete the ensemble, she wore a matching leather jacket over a white tube top. Tawny, snakeskin boots covered her feet.

Goulash, the family malamute, cocked his head looking at her with glazier blue eyes. His tail thumped a welcome at the foot of the bed.

She looked one more time and sighed. “Just what I’ve always suspected: pretty, rather than beautiful,” she said aloud.

“Huh? Do you want something?” Eryn’s identical twin, Elissa asked, removing the VirTV goggles and throwing them on the bed. She unfurled long legs from a lotus position. She’d been sitting on the bed with Goulash, watching holoVH1. She hadn’t noticed Eryn until she had spoken.

“Just talking to myself, I guess.”

Elissa let out a low whistle. “Wow. You look wicked hot, Sis. I know that outfit looks good on me, but who’d ever thought that you’d look good in it?”

“Oh, ha ha, very funny. Besides, everyone knows I’m the good looking twin,” Eryn said, one eyebrow arching a bit higher than the other to punctuate her riposte.

“Touché ma sœur,” Elissa cooed in her native French.

Eryn looked nervously from Elissa to the VirTV lying on the bed. The concave side of the wrap-around was partly facing her. She glimpsed kaleidoscoping lines of laser color arcing and intersecting along the interior surface of the glasses forming fuzzy holographic images. She also heard tinny sounds coming from the attached audio headband, a type of sound laser.

Sound waves from left and right earphones combined across neural connections forming interference patterns to produce the illusion of being in the middle of the music. However, when the sounds combined outside a neural net, such as a human nervous system, the result was flat, static sound.

“I just stopped by to see if you’d mind if I wore your ‘biker’ leathers. And, if I could use your Beamer tonight.”

“No. Take them off right now. And, did you ever hear of public transportation?” Elissa answered in English.

Eryn’s face scrunched up in a frown of surprise and rising anger.

Seeing her sister’s reaction, Elissa grinned. “Eryn, stop having kittens. I’m kidding. I don’t mind. The keys to the bike are hanging in the kitchen, next to Mom and Dad’s set for the Jag.

“What about DC?” Elissa asked, scratching Goulash behind the ears. Now that Elissa was no longer sitting quietly, he thought it was time to get some attention from his mistress. Goulash, while friendly with all family members, was Elissa’s dog more than anyone else’s. That suited Eryn just fine. She didn’t really like animals.

“I thought he was coming over tonight,” Elissa asked nonchalantly.

Oh, shit. Eryn visibly grimaced. DC stood for Danny Christopher: Danny Christopher Shaughnessy—sixth generation Irish-American, son of Maine tree farmers, her boyfriend, and would-be fiancé.

* * *

She had met Danny in Carch, just before spring break at MIT. They had met at a busy coffeehouse in Harvard Square punningly named ‘Harvard^2.’ She was 22, and a sophomore at MIT. Elissa and her boyfriend, Carson, had been waiting to give Eryn a ride back to Milton after Eryn’s late afternoon class in crystal-lattice data structures.

Although identical in appearance, Elissa—the happy twin—always had more boyfriends than Eryn. Some boys, who only wanted a quick tryst after a few drinks, thought Eryn too intense and complex.

She entered the café and saw her sister at a table across the room. Seated at the table with Elissa and her boyfriend, were two boys she didn’t know—strangers. One of the boys appeared stranger. One of them had turned around in his chair and was staring at her with that glassy stare men use when thinking with their genitals, a look she was all too familiar with having directed at her.

She began wending her way through the milling crowd, sidestepping a person here, running into snatches of disconnected conversation here and there.

Presumably, from what she could see, the other boy, not the jerk, was a friend of Carson’s. When she drew nearer to the table, the jerk who was starring turned to look from her to Elissa in agape wonder. However, she and her sister were used to the curious looks that identical twins usually got from cloddish people.

Nearing the table, she had the uncanny feeling that she was the topic of conversation. It turned out she was right. Elissa, the helpful darling, her I-am-going-to-have-to-kill-you-for-this sister, had volunteered the information that Eryn wasn’t currently seeing anyone on a regular basis.

After a round of introductions, she learned that the jerk’s name was Danny. She sat down and ordered a coffee. Despite first impressions, she found herself liking him. There was a little boy or lost puppy quality about him that totally had disarmed her.

By the end of their second date, he had confidently proclaimed that someday they’d be married.

Why had there even been a second date? Eryn mused remembering that their first date hadn’t exactly been a success. He had always been too much in awe of her. For instance, on that not-so-great-first-date, Danny had arrived at her doorstep in Milton, roses in hand but underdressed for the restaurant where they were going for dinner.

The rest of that evening hadn’t been much better. He’d spent most of it falling over himself trying to be chivalrous, stepping in front of her to open doors, constantly asking her if everything was all right. He had just been too eager to please her.

* * *

Eryn likened Danny to a piece of gravel among pearls.

He certainly wasn’t a polished Bostonian like some of the other boys in her classes at MIT. Danny wasn’t like them in the least. He lacked pretentiousness, and seemed uncomplicated, honest, and tender with her. And, he had made her laugh. He always could, with that guileless charm of his.

Maybe he was what she needed. Maybe he could take away the pain from her past. Maybe, but not right then. She needed to get away. Eryn needed to escape for little while, to immerse herself in the undertow of her passions. She wanted to feel the delicious surrender of sinking beneath the surface into a languid green-blackness of forgetfulness, running free through the night, letting her anxieties fall away from her like a wet towel, while her passions washed over her as if she were swimming naked in warm ocean water. Eryn wasn’t sure she could ever feel that way again or even if she’d ever been able to after that night in a darkened Parisian alley.

After that night, so long ago, a dangerous undertow pulled at her. Old ways and an old life tugged at her. A life that seemed decades ago yet was only two years in her past.

She needed to escape from her problems at school. Her parents expectations, and Danny’s constant wheedling to marry him. Exhausted from a grueling 22 credit-hour semester at MIT, and worried that if she didn’t take that programming course she needed during the summer session and which she’d probably not get into in the fall, her schedule would be affected without that class. She felt helpless and trapped, as if everyone was living her life—everyone except her.

All she needed was to spend the summer with a bunch of plug-n-play ‘bitheads’ while her sister spent the summer lounging on the private beach in front of their Cape Code summer home she thought ruefully. What she didn’t need was Danny, and another proposal of marriage.

She wasn’t sure exactly what troubled her about marrying Danny. She thought she loved him. However, part of her, the part that bent in shame under her mother’s accusations of “demimondaine” after the incident which nobody in her family would talk about, told her that she didn’t deserve to be happy with any man. Maybe she wouldn’t be—ever. Maybe she would never be happy again after that night long ago.

Danny seemed to need her more than she needed him. If she loved him, how could that be true? Shouldn’t the need be mutual and reciprocal? It bothered her that she didn’t seem to need him the same way.

“‘Lissa,” she said, (It was the name that Eryn had used as a little girl because she had trouble pronouncing Elissa). “I need a favor from you.”

“Yeah, what?” Elissa looked up from the bed, frowning slightly.

“I’m just not up to seeing Danny.”

“So call and cancel,” Elissa said.

Eryn looked down at her Rolex. “He’s probably already left on the ferry from Boston.”

“So send him home when he gets here. Just tell him you’ve a headache or something. Besides, what’s your problem? It’s not as though he’s a geek. In fact, he seems like a pretty nice guy. You must think so too, as much time as the two of you spend together.” Elissa turned away and reached for the VirTV to put back on her head.

“I know,” Eryn replied, looking down at the hardwood floor, examining the wood grain. “He is a nice guy and doesn’t deserve to be treated like that.” Eryn felt a cool breeze on her right cheek while the left one burned with a spreading blush. She heard waves breaking and gulls calling from outside Elissa’s open window. “That’s why I was wondering if you’d—”

Elissa jerked upright, brown eyes flashing like summer cumuli, raising a finger, and pointing it at Eryn. “I know where you’re going with this. Don’t even think it.”

“C’mon,” Eryn shrugged in frustration, lightly stamping her right foot. “Help me out here ‘Lissa; I’m feeling a little overwhelmed tonight. I need some peace and quiet time. I don’t want to hurt Danny’s feelings; but I’m not up to seeing him. I’ve all this pressure on me; and I need a little time to think. I need to clear my head; so that I can make a decision, and—” Nearly in tears and breathless, she took a deep breath and looked imploringly at her sister when Elissa looked up at Eryn.

“OK enough. I’ll do it, but please stop whining,” she said.

“Thanks big sister.” It was a standing joke between them that Elissa was her “big” sister since she was the older by 16 minutes. Eryn rubbed red puffy eyes. She sniffed, wiping her nose.

“Yes, and I’ll always be older than you. You’ll never catch up. Now go fix your face.”

Eryn smiled weakly.

“But you know, every time we pull this switching stunt it blows up in our faces. And if it does, Mom and Dad will probably see to it that neither of us gets any older,” Elissa said when Eryn turned to leave.

“What do I do if he wants to… You know.” Elissa said.

“Just do what I’d do.” Eryn tossed back over her shoulder to a wide-eyed Elissa.

Eryn turned to face her sister. “I mean, take him into P’town to a movie. Stop at ‘Firehouse Ice Cream’ for a black and white, then a quick goodnight kiss and then it’s back to the dock. By the time he gets here, he’ll only have a few hours before the last ferry leaves for Boston.”

“Gee, should I give the him some candy and pat him on the head too as he boards the ferry?” Elissa asked sarcastically.

“You two have, well, you know. Done it. Haven’t you? He’s not that wholesome is he? I mean, I thought I heard funny noises coming out of your room the last time Mom and Dad were gone on that business trip.” Elissa put up her hands then pushed her embarrassment away.

“You mean had sex?” Eryn replied.

Elissa nodded.

“Well, but only a couple of times.” Eryn said softly with a light shade of red on her cheek.

“And?” Elissa’s voice trailed off with unspoken curiosity.

“And, that’s none of your business.” Eryn playfully pushed her sister backward onto the bed. She walked over and gave her a hug when she sat up. “Thanks again. I owe you.”

“Big time. And, don’t forget it either because I intend to collect in full,” she smiled up at Eryn.

Is Wanting Enough? - Terry J Kunkel - Chapter Three: The Mirror Cracked

3:

The Mirror Cracked

The Convergence, 10^-21 Seconds before the Big Bang

I

n the ending, it was the beginning.

A long time ago or maybe it was just a moment ago, or a moment from then—it depended on a person’s temporal frame of reference—there was the universe and it was folded in upon itself. The universe was convergent. It was its own alpha and omega. Having neither a start nor finish, it was infinite, yet it was contained within a single point—a singularity of incomprehensibility. It had no extension in space or time. Indeed, space or time didn’t exist. It was like a parallel set of railroad tracks laid stretching infinitely in either direction across a desert plain, only to join back with itself to form a perfect dimensionless circle.

Chaos and Order coexisted because neither existed. If something wasn’t given a name, it didn’t exist. Without a word to render reality to an abstraction, an abstraction couldn’t exist. It was like trying to name a child that was never born, or to recall an event that never occurred. There were no words for non-concepts.

The universe was a uniform fusion of every paradox explained, every question answered, and meanings without meaning. There were no truths, untruths, or half-truths, only pure consciousness, and it was complete unto itself. This consciousness was smooth and puissant, like a placid sea on a moonless night. It was potential, vast in omnipotence, formless with form, and impotent in its power. When you are the answer to any question, there was no point in asking questions. Without questioning or searching there was no growth. Without growth, the universe couldn’t survive. The only path it could follow led to insipidness and decline.

In an effort to grow, the universe splintered into multiple personalities. First two, then three, then many. Those personalities evolved as beings within a universe still without any growth into reality.

Each of those personalities or entities inherited the characteristics of the universe. Each possessed the sum total knowledge and experiences of the universe. While such beings were individuals, each was interconnected with the others and to the universe. Each being was a separate facet of the whole, each containing the Convergent patterns to reconstruct the whole, and each entity was uniformly the same as its brethren.

Cloaked in the stagnating darkness of omnipotence, this pantheon was like a ring of dressing mirrors standing in a lightless closet, reflecting back and forth between themselves, the blackness of an infinite night. Just as a mirror in the darkness cannot reflect light that isn’t present, neither could the beings of the Convergence.

They didn’t speak to one another. Since each of them knew all there was to know, there wasn’t anything to talk about. They didn’t share ideas. To do that, or even to have a new idea, might upset the status quo.

They knew that an abstraction only became an idea, after it was filtered through the lens of language. Language, by its nature sought to label and define to whatever it was applied. Once a label was applied to an object or an idea, it became defined, and bracketed by the limitations and assumptions attached to the words used to describe it.

The beings of the Convergence knew that an idea wrapped in language whether thought or spoken, was a powerful tool. A tool that could transform their realm in ways they could not anticipate. Rather than risk change, and the possible changing of their future, or their past, they played it safe.

One of the beings, named Darq Ùon, wished for change. He would have said he was bored. That is, if there had been a word for being bored. None of the beings of the Convergence dared to name anything, for to do so might have changed their reality.

To relieve his boredom, Darq Ùon dreamed a dream of having companions to share himself with, to mentor and to succor. He thought of myriad different lightforms. However, the ones that had the spark he sought. The ones with an insatiable curiosity, and unbreakable spirit, the ones who despite their pettiness and sometime shortsightedness held the greatest potential for evolving into magnificent stewards of the universe, or even gods in their own right were the yet uncreated humans.

It was the humans’ fault. They unleashed Darq Ùon and changed the universe. They who were not yet created, but by their future need for a god, created a god in their own image. Then, the humans did the unthinkable. They, who were not yet evolved, spoke the word. They named their god.

Through the ages of humanity, the name for their god took on different forms and meanings. It was enough to even have chosen a word for god. They named the unnamable, and thereby defined its reality, or at least, one of many possible realities.

The humans had spoken the word. The word became light, and the Convergence fractured in a cataclysmic, blinding explosion. Each of the beings in the Convergence transformed as light waves passed through them. They became like lace curtains dancing in a summer breeze, their light forces streaming outward behind them, shining and diaphanous like comets in the stellar wind.

The shockwave spread across the face of the Convergence at the speed of God, like a white crack fissuring black ice. The singularity heated until it was billions of times hotter than a star, causing it to expand and throw off folded matter into space as space itself unfolded around the nexus of the singularity.

The universe, like a rosebud opening in moonlight, continued to expand, exhaling stardust from the exploding singularity. It was now divided between the enfolded Convergence of the original singularity and the unfolded, Divergence, or normal space-time.

The light seeped into the newly formed Divergence, like sunshine sparkling down into the depths of a green-blue sea. When this light touched the Divergence, all possible futures, pasts and presents for the universe coalesced into a single holographic reality.

The universe was born anew as a conscious, living hologram.

Is Wanting Enough? - Terry J Kunkel - Chapter Four

4:

Crossing Cape Cod Bay

Cape Cod Bay, Massachusetts, 18:32 EDT, Gyne 14, 4980 NA

D

anny Shaughnessy looked out over the chop, excited and agitated not unlike the waters of Cape Cod Bay he was crossing. He stood at the bow of the summer ferry like a figurehead from a sailing ship of long ago. He stared straight ahead, arms locked at the elbows bracing his stocky, muscular, 189-pound 5’10” frame against the third deck railing.

Provincetown, situated like a thumb at the end of the curled wrist of Cape Cod was Danny’s intermediate destination. If Eryn didn’t meet him at Fisherman’s Wharf, after the ferry docked, then he’d take a cab for the 20-minute ride to the Lefèvres’ beach house at Truro.

If he’d loaded his car on the ferry, he wouldn’t have had to bother with the cab. However, the 80-carat round-trip fare for ferrying a car to and from P’town was more than a Boston University premedical student could afford. He found the 35-carat passenger fare more affordable.

A cool northwesterly breeze mussed Danny’s neatly combed black hair. Dressed in a flannel shirt, jeans, a black windbreaker with zip-in lining, and work shoes, he hardly noticed the chill evening air blowing off the water. On the deck below, three teenage girls who wore only thin cotton blouses, tattered jeans shorts, and sandals shivered.

Danny idly surveyed the girls with detached interest from his vantage on the deck above. They probably were returning from a day trip to Boston. Probably just out shopping and gallivanting in general. He watched them, crowd together, joking, laughing, and jostling each other at the railing, while they ate soft-serve from reconstituted plastic dishes. It was the same type of voyeurism that compelled him to watch people talking or reading during his morning ride on the ‘T’ into Boston.

The ice cream must have tasted good going down, but in the freshening ocean breeze, he reasoned that it only added to their chill.

The ferry was passing by the Race Point lighthouse when a bright light to his left caught his peripheral vision. He turned his head, looking to the northwest, to see the evening star.

What he saw however wasn’t the evening star. It was too close, too bright, to be a star. Like a pulsar, its beam lased through the glare of the westerly sun reflected from the dunes behind and above the shoreline to his left. Whatever it was, the light remained stationery. From a fixed distance above the horizon, an electric blue ray rotated as though mounted on some sort of celestial support column. Then, he recognized the light for what it was.

The revolving blue light hit him. It swallowed him whole. He found himself staring into a swirling blue-white miasmic vortex. Danny’s gaze seemed drawn hypnotically to the center. The vortex, terrified, yet captivated him and he was unable to summon the will to wrench his gaze away. Vertigo washed over him. He wasn’t sure whether he was looking horizontally or staring down from the lip of a bottomless well—its walls smooth, sheeting light, like rainwater flowing along the inside of a culvert.

At the center of the vortex, a brighter point of light appeared in the swirling glare. Then it grew larger, as though it was drawing nearer, or maybe, he was the one getting closer to it. Closer and closer, a cube spinning on edge, drew nearer; it was possessed of a brilliant luminescence, the kind Danny had never felt. He noted that he felt, rather than saw the light. Now the cube was so close it seemed he could reach out and touch it. That is if he had been able to move. Danny noted the cube’s sides weren’t smooth the way he’d thought at first, but rather terraced in concentric squares, like the Mayan pyramids.

It took a supreme act of will, but he managed to reach out to touch the cube, now seemingly only a few feet from his face. The light blew through his fingers, stinging his hand like a fine windblown rain. Mesmerized, he looked at his hand. It seemed not at all connected to him, but alive—on its own. His fingers appeared wispy, not solid, fluttering, stretching as though the cube were pulling them. Long Slender Shadow Shafts blew away from his fingers and the lighted cube, in globs and thin strands like black ink droplets in swiftly moving water. He felt himself being sucked into the heart of the cube-light. He was at the precipice. He was falling.

Then he was out of it, staggered, the beam sweeping past him. All his strange perceptions had occurred within the space of time it took the beam to wink over him. Danny, disoriented, slipped, leaned far over the railing, falling, grabbing it for support.

“Ew. Look out so he doesn’t barf on you,” one of the ice-cream girls on the deck below, urgently warned the third companion poking her arm. “That guy up there looks seasick.”

Danny could hear what they said perfectly, but he paid no attention. Strangely, he could hear more clearly than ever. The low buzzing in his bad ear was gone. He heard only the sounds of the ocean cleaved by the hull, the breeze blowing past him, and the dull murmur of the milling passengers below.

Everything was as it should be. The ocean, rolled and heaved, reflecting the early evening sun. The air had the cool bite of a winter loathe to leave even in mid-Gyne. The crowds continued milling like restive cattle. The world seemed the same as it had before the blue light. Had he been the only one to see the strange light?

He looked toward his left, searching for the lighthouse. However, the ship’s position had changed, and now the café au lait colored sand dunes along the beach, blocked his view.

He ran his fingers through his hair, massaging his temples, trying to clear his head. Curious. It was weird: the tricks light could play on a person when one was out on the ocean. Danny chose to dismiss the incident simply as another strange mirage created by sunlight reflecting off sand dunes and water or of having the light from a lighthouse lens shine into his eyes. But wait if it had been the lighthouse light, even more curious, when had the Race Point Lighthouse been restored?

* * *

Because local maritime history was a hobby of his, Danny knew that a lighthouse preservation society had saved the Race Point Light from dilapidation and beach erosion in the 1990’s. The 1990s date was by the old calendar before the new age of man millennial calendar adjustment by the Vatican. Jumping to more current history, Danny knew that the FAA had fitted it with VOR and AWOS transmitters in 4822, as an aid to pilots flying into the nearby Provincetown airport. Then with international ratification of GNSS navigation, the government decommissioned and renovated it in 4920, making the lighthouse part of a public park. Hurricane Eryn destroyed the lighthouse in 4958. That was the same year that his Eryn was born.

Hurricane Eryn had been a peculiarly enigmatic hurricane. It had literally materialized from clear air a mere 162 kilometers off Cape Cod. The storm’s proximity to the cape, barely gave the weather bureau time to issue warnings. It was a compact storm, a mere 16 kilometers across, yet producing frightful winds and a water spout 400 meters in diameter, reaching into the cloud base 166 meters above the ocean surface. The hurricane had been remarkable in another particularly strange way; it had rotated in the wrong direction. Tornadoes and hurricanes in the northern hemisphere rotate counter-clockwise—widdershins—except of course Eryn, which for some unfathomable reason, spun clockwise or deosil.

Eryn approached Cape Cod from the northeast. It looped around Race Point, entering Cape Cod Bay and circled back toward Race Point. That it changed direction by almost 180 degrees was another of the storm’s bizarre behaviors.

Eryn made landfall about 150 meters southwest of the Race Point Lighthouse. It hit the beach with an explosion of swirling water and sand, roaring wind, thunder, and reddish ball lightning. Like a jigsaw, the cyclone cut deeply into the tip of the cape, which was a scant few hundred yards wide at that point. When the funnel-cloud drew close to the lighthouse, Eryn fired a fusillade of red lightning balls at the lighthouse, as if the storm had intentionally targeted the structure. It exploded into a spectacular eruption of greenish-white detonations, fire, smoke, and falling debris.

The storm had departed to the Northeast slicing a small 6.66-acre island from the tip of the cape. Eryn had disappeared as suddenly as she had appeared, 162 kilometers off the coast at the same coordinates where it was first sighted by 3-D radar.

* * *

Had someone restored and was currently operating the Race Point Lighthouse? Danny wondered. He’d ask Eryn tonight, after he asked her another question first. His thoughts and his gaze, shifted toward her, while he fingered the ring in his jeans pocket.

Like the Race Point Light, his brown eyes set in a boyish round face, swept back and forth across the waves. He looked past the bow of the glideboat—-its hydrofoils barely skimming the water while it almost flew above the wave tops. He strained to see the first hint of the pilgrims’ monument in Provincetown, while Boston receded into the western horizon. He looked across the water to Provincetown, and Eryn.

He missed her, but sometimes when they were together, she drove him to fits of frustration. Eryn was the most exasperating woman he had ever known. She was beautiful but didn’t realize it. She had everything going for her—studying at MIT, a wealthy family, and a great boyfriend—him. She could do worse than marry the son of a tree farmer. She gave him the oddest looks sometimes; almost implying she knew something about him that even he didn’t suspect. She changed her mind like a channel-surfing VirTV addict. When he questioned her about such caprices, she simply flashed him one of her smiles the one with a hint of mystery, and said in her pouting French accent that it was a woman’s privilege to change her mind. That was the price a man paid for a woman’s company she explained, laughing a silver-toned laugh.

Her laughter reminded Danny of Spanish guitar music—light and happy. He wanted nothing more than to make her smile and laugh like that the rest of her life.

Eryn was also understanding, kind, warm, and an articulate conversationalist—except she tended to talk about her family a bit too much. Danny felt she really listened to him during their talks, and that she cared about his opinions. She possessed one other attribute that he found irresistible.

She was the most sensual woman, Danny had ever met.

The two occasions when they had made love, Eryn’s sexual prowess amazed him. She was like a sinewy tigress, a huntress, or some sort of predator hungry It was as if his caresses were food for a starving feral beast. He smiled to himself, vainglorious in the thought that she desired him so much.

“You are such a stud,” he said softly. Apparently, it wasn’t soft enough. One of the ice-cream girls—a dishwater-blonde with long straight hair and sun-freckled face looked up at him, and smiled, showing bright white teeth, then winked. Danny noticed chilled nipples straining against her flimsy cotton blouse.

She turned quickly to one of her friends, a taller, longhaired brunette with a frizzy perm and tapped her on the shoulder. Danny watched Miss Perm bend to listen while Freckles whispered into her ear and pointed at Danny. The brunette, cast a quick glance up at Danny, looked at Freckles, and then hurriedly spoke to their remaining companion. Because Danny was slightly deaf in one ear—a casualty of a severe ear infection in high school—he couldn’t hear any of either conversation.

The last companion snickered putting a hand over her mouth to hide her laugh, then looked up at Danny with a curious frown. The three girls looked from him to each other, then convulsed into high-pitched tittering giggles while walking over to the starboard side of the boat.

Although Eryn had been an enthusiastic partner the two times they’d made love, he sensed she was holding back part of herself from him. He sensed she held in reserve something or some place deep within herself that was only for her. Only she could go there.

It seemed to him that she was ashamed of the pleasure she received, or maybe she felt guilty. It almost seemed as though she felt she didn’t deserve such pleasure, that she had committed some dark, secret sin that bound her forever in a state of self-denial, self-recrimination, and penitence.

There were secrets behind those thoughtful brown eyes of hers. Eryn had intimated to him about her past during some of their talks, but what kind of past could she have? How bad had it been? She was simply your everyday beautiful, New Age technologies engineering student at MIT, who one day soon would be his wife and bear his children.

Family was important to Danny. That attitude he had adopted from his father, Daniel Sr. He had seen how important he and his mother were to his father. Cherish your family, his father had always said. Danny took that lesson to heart.

Another belief he formulated was that money was something to be saved for times when the wolf came calling at your door. He wasn’t miserly; his attitude was the result of a slightly deprived childhood.

* * *

Daniel Sr. had bought a tree farm in Maine; an investment that he thought would ensure his family’s dreams. With only four years left in a 24-year growth and harvest cycle, Daniel had looked forward to prosperity for his family. That meant a college fund for Danny and a few luxuries for his wife, Mary. Then, the government in drastic and sweeping environmental legislation declared most forests left standing in the United States protected groves.

Fortunately, his father had a field warden job with the Maine Department of Natural Resources, so while the family didn’t have a surplus of money, their situation never became desperate either.

Danny, who never wanted for any necessities, knew his parents weren’t able to afford many luxuries. Danny didn’t mind though. Sometimes it did bother him that he wasn’t able to do or have some of the things his more well-to-do friends did or had.

Sometimes he’d fantasize about being older, successful, and able to pamper his wife and family with the things he wasn’t able to have when he was a child. His dream was to be able to grant their every whim and inundate them with expensive presents.

Daniel had occasionally allowed his son to accompany him on his patrols through the forests. It was during those father/son foot patrols that Danny had come to love the outdoors.

Through his parents selfless sacrificing, grants, and student loans, tuition money to enroll Danny in Boston University’s premed program had been raised.

* * *

It had been during his freshman year that he had met Eryn.

He and some buddies from BU met Elissa Lefèvre at a Harvard Square watering hole. The name of the place was punningly named Harvard².

Elissa and her boy friend were there waiting for Eryn to finish a late class in crystal lattice data Structures. Danny and Tim Luuke walked into the café. Tim saw his friend, Carson Maenad. Tim and Carson had attended high school together in Milton. Upon graduation, Tim enrolled in BU while Carson decided to attend college in Milton.

Carson and Elissa had volunteered to pick Eryn up after her class. It was a good excuse for the two of them to drive into Boston for a date. Carson spotted his friend across the crowded café waved Danny and him to his and Elissa’s table. It took a few minutes for Danny and Tim to make their way to the table by the far wall.

Upon arriving at the table, Tim and Carson shook hands while introductions were made. Immediately upon meeting Elissa, Danny was smitten by her beauty. He looked at Elissa, and saw in her the brown-eyed girl from his high school freshman economics class whom he’d followed around like a lovesick puppy. Like Elissa, that girl had had big brown eyes, and long flowing brown hair. She had been captain of the school color guard, class treasurer, and completely oblivious of Danny’s affections. But Danny persisted in his unrequited puppy-love. He’d been too shy and self-conscious to approach her, so he suffered in silent angst. However, he had promised himself, that someday he would marry a girl just like her and once they were married, he would ensure that she wanted for nothing and had all the finest things.

Nevertheless, it always seemed that his dream girl—whomever he was fancying at the moment—was always unattainable. Just as Elissa was unattainable for him since he knew that she and Carson had been dating fairly steadily for the last two months, and it wasn’t in his nature to interfere with someone’s relationship. Good-naturedly he asked Elissa, “Anymore at home like you?”

“Actually, there’s one that looks just like me,” Elissa giggled knowing Danny was unaware that she had a twin sister.

Danny smiled at her across the table thinking that she was talking about her mother. Carson sat across from Danny with a smirk on his face. “But, I suppose your mother’s married too,” Danny said, playing along with the perceived joke.

“Oh, no—well yes, she is, but I was talking about my sister, Eryn. She’s not spoken for either.” Elissa glanced at her diamond Piaget wristwatch, then at the crowd of milling people parting around their table. “And with impeccable timing, here she comes.”

* * *

It had been on his and Eryn’s second date that he had told her that one day they would be married.

They weren’t engaged yet, but that was an oversight that he would correct soon. He again fingered the diamond ring in his right hip pocket. Danny proposed to Eryn at regular intervals.

Since their second date, he had known Eryn was meant for him. When he proposed on their forth date, Eryn mistakenly thought he was joking.

That incident had embarrassed Danny, but he had remained undaunted and continued his pursuit of Eryn. He proposed four more times during the following three months. She always found a way to decline without hurting Danny’s feelings, usually citing school as the reason she couldn’t marry just yet.

Danny was confident though that Eryn was weakening. The last time he proposed, she had been quieter, gentler than other times she had said no. She had sat next to him, looking not at him, but at the floor, her hand resting on his thigh, and told him for the fourth time that she didn’t want to get married until after college.

Her soft French accent had become more pronounced under the stress, surfacing through her New England lilt, while she spoke. Danny had taken that as a good sign. He had believed Eryn instead of not wanting to marry him was now merely torn between the two choices of marrying him before she graduated from MIT or waiting until after graduation.

* * *

Danny bumped from his brown study of whitecaps when the deck railing pushed into his stomach. He looked up focusing on the approaching shoreline. Obviously, the ferry pilot had initiated docking maneuvers into Provincetown harbor.

The ship listed slightly to port coming down off its hydrofoils. The ship banked gracefully, while its left side bit water. Its starboard side still supported by a monopole field caused the ship to swing about, lining up perfectly for entrance into the unmarked harbor channel next to the whale watching boat moorings. With the turn completed, the entire ship settled gently into the water. All magnetic fields dissipated and the ship switched to an impeller drive slowing for docking at Fisherman’s Wharf.

Danny scrutinized the faces lining the pier. He thought, rather hoped, that Eryn had decided to meet him at the wharf instead of waiting for him at her parents’ beach house. He could use the money saved from cab fare for the evening’s activities. Since they usually ended up in Provincetown anyway, why should he have to ride to Truro, only to come directly back to P’town?

He waited with disembarking until all the automobiles had driven off the lower ferry deck. He searched the faces lining the dock area one last time while walking down the gangplank. He impatiently checked his Timex—6:58 PM.

Where was Eryn?

Is Wanting Enough? - Terry J Kunkel - Chapter 5: Future Tense

5:

Future Tense

Kenwood Ridge Road, Wisconsin, USA, August 21, 1996 CE

P

eregrine followed Dry Creek Road for another kilometer, then turned onto Kenwood Ridge Road starting the four kilometers climb back to his home, the hot tub, and that glass of icy Coke.

He was running smoother now. His muscles had begun to loosen up again with recommenced exertion. He climbed another kilometer closer to the end of his evening run, while the fields tall corn and cut hay disappeared behind him.

Maples and oaks stretched overhead like twisted fingers clutching clumps of leafy green. The branches cast shadows across the road and black cracks of bark and branches across the sky. Birch leaves shone bright silvery green in the waning rays of the sun while the fresh cool scent of conifers replaced that of damp hay in summer heat.

Peregrine, his eyes focused ahead with runners’ tunnel vision, did not at first notice the landscape wavering like a reflection on a pond disturbed by ripples from a thrown stone. He did not notice an otherworldly breeze rustling the leaves of the overhanging branches. The rippling effect intensified, while at the same time the colors of his surroundings drained away. He stopped, squeezed his eyes tightly shut, while rubbing them.

When he opened his eyes again, the rippling of his vision had subsided somewhat. Now, there appeared a strange, blurry afterimage, like a double exposure photograph. He could still see the familiar woods of Kenwood Ridge and the road leading to the summit, but there was something else there also. Something too faint and blurred to discern, but superimposed enough that it demanded he deal with it. If he didn’t look directly at it he could get an impression of the image.

Then the image was gone and Peregrine’s world came back into sharp, bright, clear focus. Almost too sharp and bright were the familiar sights of the road leading up through the woods of Kenwood Ridge. It was as if a hard rain from a thunderstorm, so common during the Wisconsin summers had cleansed the stagnant humid air, replacing the haze with clean clear air.

However, not a single raindrop had fallen. The sky was still a cloudless, fierce blue. Something else had recharged the surrounding landscape infusing it with colors that were more vibrant to making it stand out in sharper contrast. Something else had replaced the heavy sweltering atmosphere with a sweeter and purer one. Even Peregrine, who should have been fatigued after running more than 10 kilometers in ninety degree heat, felt refreshed and ready to finish the remaining three kilometers in record time.

Continuing his run, he wondered about the alien image he had just seen. He wondered whether those images were one of the ‘visions’ his mother said he might experience as his psi ability matured. “Nah, couldn’t be,” he said shaking his head, “Just been doing too many klicks in this heat. I’m starting to imagine things.”

For no reason, he turned and looked at the road behind him. He heard or perhaps felt the presence of another. Despite his sense of someone behind him, he was genuinely astonished to actually see another runner about half kilometer behind him and gaining ground fast.

Peregrine usually had the back roads around Deer Crossing to himself during his evening runs. Occasionally he might meet an older couple from one of the surrounding farms out for their twilight constitutional, but for the most part, the beer and brat crowd from town hadn’t gotten the word yet about the benefits of exercise. Therefore, it was unusual to meet someone out running. Where had the stranger come from anyway?

From Peregrine’s house, Dry Creek Road led eastward into downtown Deer Crossing. To the West, Dry Creek Road ran four kilometers along the base of Kenwood Ridge where it ended in a ‘T’ with Kenwood Ridge Road. At the ‘T,’ Kenwood Ridge Road went north and south. To the South, it wound its way through the bluffs of Raccoon Coulee past Amish farmsteads and sawmills to where it ended at Junction Corners and Route 35.

Peregrine followed the northern branch of the ‘T’ where it abutted the base of Kenwood Ridge. The road would continue northward, then east until it turned south and climbed through the trees to the top of the ridge to meet Dry Creek Road just a little east of his house. He ran this 13-kilometer loop almost every night. He knew every access to the road, from fire lanes that cut through the woods to rutted field roads that circumnavigated the fields and pastures. He knew all the farmhouses that were along his nightly route.

The Amish probably got more amusement from watching him jog by each evening than from participating. They would watch and wave politely when he passed by their farms. Peregrine imagined that, they leaned on their pitchforks or threshing machines, shaking their bearded faces and wondering if all the English were as “touched” as he was.

That thought brought back the question. Where had the other runner come from? He could not have come from anywhere nearby except Peregrine’s house. He looked back over his shoulder again at the stranger, trying to identify him.

Peregrine thought that in a general way, the stranger resembled his father. He couldn’t see his face too well because of the distance and the fact the man wore a pair of sport sunglasses. Maybe the old man decided he’d get some physical training tonight also. However, Peregrine discounted that idea, noticing the stranger wore white and purple running shorts with matching marathoner’s singlet. His father would never wear anything except the red and gold physical training uniform of the Third Marine Division. He doubted that his father could have followed him this far without Peregrine noticing him before now.

So, who was this guy? Whoever he might be, he was slowly gaining on Peregrine. The stranger had now narrowed the gap between himself and Peregrine to about a hundred yards. Well, if he wanted to race, Peregrine would oblige. He reached out with his right hand for an imaginary shift stick. While making imaginary engine noises, he shifted into overdrive.